For those who have read that the old analog TV system will be a thing of the past early in 2009 but are not sure what that might mean to them, PC Magazine published an article recently with explanations and further resources. 

Those with satellite or cable TV need not be concerned about the change.  But, says, PC Magazine, “People who connect their TVs to a nearby antenna in order to receive television programming will need a digital tuner in order to continue receiving terrestrial television signals after February 17th, 2009.  If the TV in question is relatively new, it may already incorporate the necessary digital tuner; check the TV’s tuner specs for something called “ATSC” (the digital terrestrial broadcast tuner).

“If the TV is an older model or it is an HDTV that is described as “HD-Ready” or as an “HD Monitor.” then a digital tuner set-top box will be needed to view digital terrestrial broadcasting.  To help offset the cost of upgrading TVs with digital television (DTV) tuners, Congress created the TV Converter Box Coupon Program that provides up to two $40 coupons per household that can be applied to the purchase price of eligible DTV converter boxes.”

The new update to Zoho Writer includes DocX support, thesaurus (in 10 languages), sharing with groups, enhanced endnotes/footnotes, and enhanced headers/footers.

Previous updates include pagination, headers & footers, headnotes & footnores, and offline support.   Check the Zoho Writer blog for more information.

TechCrunch reports that Writer users have increased 30 percent since last November, with 2 million user sessions per month although usage still trails Google Docs, and of course, Microsoft Word.

I like the sound of this free web application found at Lifehacker.  Libraries, educational institutions and non-profits often create information booklets they want to print and distribute to patrons/customers.  Here’s a way to easily create a foldable printed booklet up to 8 pages from a PDF file. 

Your document has to be a PDF in portrait orientation.  You just upload it to BookletCreator and download the result.  Then you print it out, chosing “print on both sides” in your printer preferences.  Finally, stack pages in the correct order, fold in half and stable.  You might want to practice to make sure you understand how things will go together before printing out a big order. 

BookletCreator suggests some options if you have slightly different needs.  You don’t even have to register at the site.  Image by elph.  Creative Commons license.

“Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful.  Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online,” says the Official Google Blog this morning, as they introduce the first screen shots of what the service may look like when released later this year.

Google will focus on privacy and security and will give users complete control over their own health data, not sharing or selling it without explicit permission. 

Their platform strategy will allow users to “automatically import information such as your doctors’ records, your prescription history, and your test results into Google Health in order to easily access and and control your data.  Later, this platform strategy will mean that you will be able to interact with services and tools easily, and will be able to do things like schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and start using new wellness tools.”

Data portability is another useful feature.  Users will be able to move their health data between their various health providers seamlessly and with total control.

Google’s role in the important health information field will be to create “a clean, easy-to-use user experience that makes managing your health information straightforward and easy.”  Several screen shots such as the example below show the development so far as they work with partner Cleveland Clinic.

I am taking a break from blogging for a bit. Back before long.

Free tools for visual communication and publishing
Here’s a interesting group of eight free, mostly online, tools from Robin Good to help you edit images, do a screencast, generate buttons, and upload videos to a number of services with one click.
 
Developing an improved online environment for educating computer users 
People who want to learn more about computer technology and solve problems they encounter on their systems currently have a wealth of forums to turn to such as mailing lists and newsgroups, official and unofficial documentation and more collaborative media, says Andy Oram at O’Reilly Radar.

He suggests that a community education environment should include:

• Easy access for adding questions and editing both questions and answers
• A suitable division of material into different types
• Extensive linking that not only helps people find information, but shows them a variety of pathways through related documents
• Support for combining questions, dividing questions into subquestions, and extracting material to make stand-alone pages
• Recognition of authorship
• An API that can be incorporated into tools of the users’ choice
• Push technology for people who want it
• Source control
• Integration with bug reports and feature requests
• Print-on-demand

Let’s start with some specs for the new MacBook Air:  1.6GHz or 1.8GHz of Intel’s Core 2 Duo, with 2GB of soldered RAM, 802.11a/b/g/n (802.11n is Draft 2.0), Bluetooth, a 13.3-inch LED-backlit screen, and a choice between a standard 80GB ATA hard drive or a 64GB solid-state flash drive.  There is no optical drive, no FireWire ports, only one USB port, and a micro-DVI port.  It weighs 3 pounds, and fits in a manilla envelope. 

If you are seriously considering a purchase, check out this very detailed review by Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica, who found “the size and weight to be nothing less than absolutely delightful.”

But the Air “slows to a halfway-unusable crawl anytime there’s a large amount of disk activity—running a browser that reads and writes a lot to the drive (*cough* Firefox), transferring files over the network in the background, anything.”  She didn’t regret the absence of an optical drive, but declared battery life and time to recharge the Air’s worst feature.

“Think of it [the Air] as an iPod touch Extreme with a built-in keyboard.  It is not meant to be your only or main computer—rather, it’s a secondary (or even tertiary) computer.”

New tools, Web services for online collaboration
There’s no doubt that the idea of collaborating online with your scattered work team has moved from an interesting concept to the level of necessity for accomplishing the best outcomes.

Take a look at Robin Good’s new tools and web services list of online collaboration technologies.  You may find some some you were unaware of.

Gizmo gets MySpace IM support
Duncan Riley at TechCrunch says that Gizmo Project offers an attractive feature set.  “Gizmo has long since lost the battle against Skype to become the dominant VOIP service, however if you’re looking for a fully featured mobile IM client that also offers cheap calls it might be worth a look.”

In addition to wide IM support that makes it a competitor to Adium and Trillian, the VOIP side offers competitively priced calls to external numbers, as well as free calls to those using the SIPphone platform.  File transfer and cross platform voice chat is supported for all, as well as video calling between Gizmo users only. 

Test phones online before buying
Now this sounds like a great service — a free online place where you can accurately test the features of some high-end phones to help you make a decision before you buy.  As Friedbeef’s Tech points out, it’s one thing to read reviews and something else to have a feeling for how the things important to you will actually work.

He laments the small number of phones currently testable at TryPhone (currently 14), but notes that they continue to add new ones.  You can compare models side-by-side or take a close look at each one.  The site will show you an overview of the phone (from a variety of mobile service providers), reviews when available, give you specs, demos of features, and also has a shopping cart for buyers. 
 
TryPhone says “the goal of TryPhone is to show you how things REALLY work (not how they were designed to work) – without marketing hype – to help you make a better, more informed purchasing decision.”
 

In possibly the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger, Microsoft Corp. made a bid to buy Yahoo Inc. for $44.5 billion in cash and stock. 

Described as “its boldest-ever acquisition move, Microsoft sent a letter to Yahoo’s board on Thursday night, offering $31 per share for the Internet media company, a 62 percent premium over its Nasdaq closing stock price that day.”  The Yahoo board will evaluate the offer.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer sees the move as critical to Internet business growth, especially against its major competition, Google.

Major blogging pundits have started to imagine what a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would look like.    Register your opinion at Mashable’s daily poll.

Refine Google Maps searches
Google Maps has added three new search options for refining your search when you find and follow the new “show search options” link near the search box for the drop down menu:

• Locations - Search terms will find only addresses, places of interest or other location names 
• Businesses - Search terms find only businesses
• User-created content - Search terms find maps created by users in Google or anywhere on the web

Meebo Rooms turn into A Web service
Meebo has released an API for its Meebo Rooms that will allow Websites to embed chat functionality in an automated fashion, notes TechCrunch.

Manual embedding of code led to a proliferations of Meebo widgets, but now the process is automated.  As well, the new Meebo Network has been introduced, which will serve ads inside Meebo Rooms across the Web, splitting revenues with the Websites hosting the rooms.

Access to the full APIs and the ad network is by invitation only at this point.  Social networks could use the new APIs to automatically add chat rooms to every group page.

“The power of Meebo Rooms is that they let anyone create live conversations on their site by aggregating people with similar interests from other sites. In fact, it links people between sites,” says Erick Schonfeld.

Amazon buying Audible Inc.
In a move to expand its offerings in the digital space, Amazon announced yesterday that it plans to acquire Audible.com, the “leading online provider of premium digital spoken word audio content, specializing in digital audio editions of books, newspapers and magazines, television and radio programs and original programming.”

Audible offers over 80,000 programs, including audiobooks from well-known authors such as Stephen King, Thomas Friedman, and Jane Austen, and spoken word audio content from sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Fresh Air and Charlie Rose.